Cognitive Battlefield

The author(s)

Discover how people’s attitudes, behaviors, and decision-making have been influenced by the plethora of information and communication they are exposed to.

People receive and exchange an enormous amount of communication every day. A major question of our time is how does this information influence people’s attitudes, behaviors, and decision-making? We explore this question in our three-part Cognitive Battlefield series.

Download Part I today to learn about our framework for understanding how people make evaluations and decisions.

Key to influencing people’s attitudes are creating “sticky” messages that grab people’s attention. Part II of the Cognitive Battlefield series describes techniques for creating persuasive messages based on social science research. Specific techniques, like confirmation of existing beliefs, source credibility, and hot cognition, can be used to make messages particularly compelling. In Part II of this series, we outline a framework for crafting persuasive messaging using a case study on how messaging about how to strengthen the economy can either unite or divide Republican and Democrats.